The Wetpixel Ambon Night Safari is underway in full force; we are doing 3 night dives each evening here at Maluku Divers and are enjoying being immersed in a soup of the bizarre creatures that inhabit the waters of Ambon, including discarded diapers, tampons and other desirable subjects. Unfortunately, the nasty stuff thrown into the bay is part of what creates such an interesting underwater habitat.

Most of our group is shooting with standard macro rigs, but there are 3 insect eye relay lenses here at the resort. Julian and I are both shooting INON lenses, and Tony has a custom job from Japan. They can be incredibly frustrating to use, but successful images often describe scenes that have never before been seen. The photo in this post is a screen grab from HD video taken with my Canon 7D and insect eye lens. The main subject, a mass of eggs from a panda anemonefish (Amphiprion polymus), is normally photographed using a super-macro setup. Using an insect eye lens, I was able to capture video of both the tiny eggs and attentive parent fish. Each egg houses a late-stage baby anemonefish, an in the video, you can see tiny hearts beating and eyes moving.

The most well-known dive site in Ambon is called Laha. Laha is known as “Twilight Zone” by the folks who first dove it – and for good reason: its mucky slope is packed full of the strange and outrageous. When we came here in April of 2009, we enjoyed the site so much that we spent 6 full days diving its mucky slope.

The new moon is approaching, and everywhere in Ambon, animals have aggregated to spawn. In a single large hole in the reef, we saw 4 large stonefish fidgeting about with their heads nearly touching. Many of the critters we are finding down there are stuffed full of eggs. During a midnight dive last night, I spotted a pregnant harlequin swimming crab (Lissocarcinus laevis) hiding under some sort of tube anemone. After a few minutes, the crab walked out slowly from under her protective umbrella and extended her brood pouch – a sure sign that she was about to release eggs. After 4 minutes of gentle egg aeration, she sprang into the water column without warning, releasing all of her eggs in a few seconds of spastic gyration. This photo was taken moments before she released her eggs.

Coleman’s shrimp (Periclimenes colmani), a beautiful commensal shrimp that lives in pairs on fire urchins (Asthenosoma varium), are fairly common in Ambon. Fire urchins are typically found here at depths of 60-90 feet, and about one out of 20 will have at least one of three kinds of commensal crustacea living on them.

Using the INON insect eye lens (Underwater Micro Semi-Fisheye Relay Lens UFL-MR130 EFS60), I was able to capture two Coleman’s shrimp in a valley of fire urchin spines. Shots taken with traditional lenses cannot capture the colorful environment in which these shrimp live.

A juvenile paper nautilus still in its salp-like egg casing. Ambon, Indonesia.

During our dives here in Ambon over the past few days, we have been accompanied in the water by large salp-like chains of floating paper nautilus eggs. Before I knew what they were, I assumed that they were just some sort of jelly, and as I do with most jellies, I avoided them. But on a night dive a few days ago, Lea Moser photographed a newly-hatched paper nautilus stuck to our dive guide's finger. We quickly realized that the floating &quot;salps&quot; were actually paper nautilus eggs. I gently took one into my hand as it floated by, and it has quite a lot of structure to it (unlike jellies). An internal flap pulses, giving the egg sack propulsion, and a golden brown paper nautilus baby is protected within.

I'm here in beautiful Bali heading home tomorrow while (most of) the rest of the crew heads on to Toraja and then Misool. It was an amazing trip with critters o' plenty! Along with innumerable eels, ghost pipefish, harlequin shrimp, and the aforementioned fire urchin denizens, it was a frogfish festival! I personally counted 18 different individuals in my time there. Ridiculous!

The coup d' grace was when Kozy, one our keen-eyed compatriots, spotted not one, but FOUR juvenile hairy froggies in less than 5 feet of water. After a little time, one of them was kind enough to oblige me

I finally had a chance to try out my new Sola light and Eric brought several more for other folks to try. Some dives the slope was simply awash in red light! The red option proved invaluable for many of the night critters, especially shy crustaceans like Saron shrimp

Lots more pics and stories, but that'll have to wait until a better internet connection and when I go through the rest of the pics (despite being diligent and a bit ruthless in culling, I still have a couple hundred keeper images worthy of further consideration!). Thanks to Eric, Tony and everyone else for being great, sharing knowledge and making it a fantastic trip. Extra special kudos to Maluku Divers for putting up with us, especially when we were diving until 2 a.m. a couple nights. More to follow...

Phil

Phil Sokol
Canon 5D3 and 7D, Nauticam and Subal, an assortment of strobes and too many damn lenses!
"Hey Dean! How do you work this crazy thing?!" Jerry Lewis

Here's a few pics from me, also shot with the insect eye lens. Eric persuaded me not to leave it at the bottom of the ocean, as I was totally frustrated with it, and I'm glad he guilted me into giving it another go.

We are in Toraja now shooting all sorts of strange and wonderful things and then onto Misool!

Back at home and jealous of the rest of the group heading on to Misool, but thought I'd post a few more. With all the great photographic vibe amongst everyone on the trip, I got inspired to give some new things a go, trying to get away from my typical macro mode of blasting away at full power and f22. I tried a bunch of different strobe settings and lighting as well as shallow depth of field. Despite my fine collection of Home Depot plumbing parts, snooting was still mostly an exercise in frustration, but some of the other stuff worked well, I think.

Interests:Protecting our Ocean, Environmental Education,
Having fun and Living Well

Posted 25 November 2010 - 07:31 AM

Truly wonderful images folks! Unbelievable diversity of subjects. So tell me about the dive area you covered in a typical dive. Where you spread out across a large area? I can just imagine what it must have looked like to the locals. All those strobes lighting up the ocean everynight. They will probably remember it for years. I'm betting you guys will too.